Basement Stairs
by ThirdGorchBro
Summary: A Season 7 vignette, post-Showtime. Xander can see the storm coming, but he can't stop it.


Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and a bunch of corporate suits own Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I own diddly.

Author's Notes: Early in Season 7, it seemed like they were setting up Xander for an interesting character arc - what happens when the heart of the Scooby Gang loses heart? Of course, that got dropped so that Buffy could give us lots of inspiring speeches.

Yeah.

Anyway, here's my take on what Xander might have been thinking, set right after "Showtime." Warning, angst-a-palooza!

* * *

I walk down the basement stairs, the old wood creaking under my feet. The plastic of the blood pack feels cool and slick against my hand. The flesh in my palm twitches, as if it can't wait to get rid of its burden.

They're sitting together on the cot in the far corner of the basement. She's dabbing uncertainly at the wounds on his chest with a damp washcloth, her free hand resting on his back. The cuts are deep and vivid, those alien symbols carved into his flesh like the Ten Commandments or something. Evil commandments, maybe.

Buffy glances up at me as I walk over to them, and flashes a brief smile at me as I hand her the blood pack.

"Thanks," she murmurs distractedly, her eyes already back on him. She pops the seal on the pack with one practiced hand and sticks it under Spike's nose.

He must be really out of it, because it takes a couple of seconds for him to react. His face is really beaten up too, as bad as I've ever seen. And Spike's taken a hell of a lot of beatings over the years.

But after a moment, his eyes open and he vamps out. Then he starts sucking down the blood like my old man sucks down a beer after a couple of dry days. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good analogy for Spike's last few days. My father thinks a day without a drink is like a day of being tortured.

I have to look away from him after a minute. Watching Spike feed always creeps me out a little. So I look at Buffy instead.

And the look on her face ...

She's watching him drink, and there's no revulsion in her eyes, there's not even cool detachment. Instead, her gaze is tender, warm. It reminds me of the way she used to look at ... Angel.

And that's when it hits me, like a punch to the chest. She loves him.

She really does love him.

All the old arguments rise up out of my throat, only to turn to ashes in my mouth. There's just no point anymore. What can I say that I haven't said before? Besides, Buffy and I can never disagree without it turning into a shouting match, without tearing and clawing at each other.

I'm tired of trying to protect her from herself. Half the time I'm wrong, anyway. And even when I'm right, it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Buffy's white knight, Angel called me. Not anymore, I guess. My armor's gone all gray, now. You could say I've kind of lost the heart for it.

I know this isn't going to end well. Like a storm on the horizon, I can see it coming but I can't stop it. Spike's nature will assert itself and he'll break her heart, or he'll get killed, or he'll leave, which will pretty much amount to the same thing.

A part of me feels almost sorry for him. He gets his soul, only to be turned into an unwitting killer by the First. He's killed more people in the past few weeks than in the three years prior to that. And who knows if the trigger is still there or not? How will any of us be able to trust him? How will he be able to trust himself?

Poor bastard. Can't win, can't break even, can't even quit the game. The things we do for love.

Yeah, I sympathize. A little. I still hate his guts, though. For what he did to Buffy, and for what he tried to do to her. For all the times he's tried to kill us. For kidnapping me and Willow, and knocking me unconscious. For trying to vamp Will when he first escaped from the Initiative.

For what he did with Anya.

And for all the insults. For all the times he made me feel like I was worthless, useless. Less than a man. There's a little voice in my head telling me that I insulted him often enough, too, but I ignore it. He was evil, dammit!

But ...

But he stayed with us after Buffy died, helped take care of Dawn. Helped us patrol. Saved each of our lives, more than once. And he wasn't in on our little resurrection plan. As far as he knew, Buffy was gone forever. But he still stayed.

And he chose to get a soul. Or so Buffy says.

I don't know what to make of it. This stuff has some pretty big philosophical implications, but it's way beyond me. I'm not an intellectual. My own personal philosophy is pretty simple: You hurt the people I care about, and I'll do my best to see you dead.

Except even that doesn't seem to work for me any more. Instead of staking Spike, I'm helping Buffy rescue him and bringing him blood to drink.

Nothing in my world has made any sense since I walked away from marrying Anya. That bastard Warren should have been nothing more than a villain-of-the-week, but he did more damage to us than anyone since Angelus.

Willow killed him, and I'll never be sorry for that, but only for what it did to her. She went way out into the black, and when she came back she wasn't the same person. I guess she couldn't be. But now she avoids talking to me, and makes "Tool Time" jokes that somehow seem to hurt a lot more than they should.

Anya's human again, but we're farther apart than ever. Part of me is almost glad; this is her chance to become her own person, to find out who she really is and what she wants out of life. She doesn't need me holding her back.

But God, I miss her so much. I miss holding her in my arms, I miss the way her hair smelled, I miss her humor and the joy she took in running the Magic Box. Yeah, I miss the sex, too. I'm a guy.

But I walked away, and I don't deserve to get any of that back. And the real hell of it is, I still kind of think it was the right thing to do, no matter how much it hurt her. Hurt both of us. I just wasn't able to fully commit to her.

Being a Scooby would have always come first. Buff and Will would have always come first.

Although they don't really seem to need me much, any more. It figures. No matter what choice I make, it's never the right one.

These days, Buffy doesn't seem to need any of us.

Every day that passes Buffy withdraws into herself a little more, closes off herself to all of us. Her beautiful heart is still in there, but she won't let herself show it. That little flash of love I saw on her face for Spike is probably the only thing she lets herself feel now. Every day she gets a little colder, a little harder.

Every day I recognize her less and less.

But she's still Buffy, right? I have to believe in her. I have to. If I didn't, if I thought that she wasn't on her game... but I don't even want to contemplate that.

Her eyes slide sideways toward me, and I think I see a flicker of annoyance cross her face. Ten bucks says she finds a polite way to ask me to leave.

Sure enough, she turns toward me and says, "Thanks for the blood, Xander. Can you check on everyone upstairs?"

No, I want to say. Tell me what you're thinking, tell me that you have a plan to beat the First. Tell me that you're in control, that we're going to win.

Tell me that you're not in love with Spike.

Tell me everything's going to be okay.

Instead, I smile and say, "Sure thing, Buff." I turn and start up the stairs, my steps slow and heavy to my ears. Behind me, Spike is sucking down the last of the blood. And I feel the storm clouds getting closer, closing in.

I try and put it out of my head. Got to focus on the right-here-and-now. After all, I have important work to do.

The windows need fixing again.

END


End file.
